True Murder: The Most Shocking Killers in True Crime History

Joseph Weldon Brown confessed to more than a dozen murders across seven states. He was convicted and sentenced for killing a woman whose body he dismembered and scattered across three Indiana counties. In prison, he hogtied and strangled his cellmate, then asked the judge to lock him up for life because if he was released, he would continue killing. Police detective Rick Reed was on the scene when...

The shocking true-crime story of a U.S. Border Patrol agent turned serial killer, the four sex workers whom he mercilessly killed, and the upended border town of Laredo where his heinous crimes occurred. Twelve days is all it took. Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Anne Luera, Guiselda Hernandez, and Janelle Ortiz were four marginalized women striving to make ends meet as sex workers. They looked out for...

The bestselling author of  Norco ’80  returns to True Murder with a riveting story of mid-1980s San Diego that placed one young Black man at the center of a whirlwind of crime and punishment that profoundly altered Southern California. March 31, 1985. Two white patrol officers in search of a gang member followed a pickup truck carrying seven young Black men up a dirt driveway in the Encanto neighb...

Mike and Denise Williams had a tight knit, seemingly unbreakable bond with childhood friends, Brian and Kathy Winchester. The two couples were devout, hardworking Baptists who lived perfect, quintessentially Southern lives. Their friendship seemed ironclad. That is, until December 16, 2000, when Denise’s husband Mike disappeared while duck hunting on Lake Seminole. After no body was found, everyon...

It’s a case that has stumped generations of detectives and Internet sleuths. On Sept. 16, 2009, 24-year-old Richardson was arrested at an oceanside Malibu restaurant and taken to Malibu/Lost Hills Sheriff’s Station. With no money, no phone, and no ride, and in the midst of what was later described by law enforcement as a severe bipolar episode, Richardson was released by the Los Angeles County She...

On May 31, 1985, two days before her high school graduation, Shari Smith was abducted from the driveway of her family home in South Carolina. Based on the crime scene and the abductor’s repeated and taunting calls to the family, law enforcement quickly realized they were dealing with a sophisticated and highly dangerous criminal. A letter arrived the next day entitled “Last Will & Testament,”...

Before the sensational cases of Amanda Knox and Casey Anthony—before even Lizzie Borden—there was Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder in America’s debut media circus. On Christmas night, December 25, 1843, in a serene village on Staten Island, shocked neighbors discovered the burnt remains of twenty-four-year-old mother Emelin Houseman and her infant daughter, An...

A Harvest of Innocence  is Dan Stidham's story, until now untold, regarding his involvement in the West Memphis 3 murder case. He stepped into its current as a young lawyer, unaware of its strength and the immutable, unpredictable eddies that would forever change his life and his view of the law. He tells it now because it must be told. He spent most of the past 30 years viewed in widely disparate...

Award-winning author and journalist Ivor Davis, author of Manson Exposed: A reporter's 50-year journey into Madness and Murder discusses he and his wife Sally's investigation into their longtime friend and neighbor when he is arrested for the murder of his wife and stepson. Ivor and Sally Davis were horrified when their Malibu neighbors, Verna Roehler and her son, Doug died in a terrible boating a...

Step back in time to the winter of 1929, where the magic of Christmas in Brooklyn, New York, was shattered by a heinous act that reverberated through the ages. In "The Murder of Mary Falzone: A Shocking True Crime Story,” Rod Kackley unravels the chilling tale of a family torn apart by an explosion that claimed the lives of Mary, Philip, and Rose Falzone, innocent children whose lives were extingu...

No Hollywood script can compare to the terror of the 37 true tales in OF MOBSTERS AND MOVIE STARS: The Bloody "Golden Age" of Hollywood! In this gripping historical account, expert crime historian Joan Renner explores the shadowy world of fame and crime during Hollywood's most glamorous era. As Los Angeles transformed into the epicenter of film, it also became a haven for notorious criminals and m...

In 2004, the FBI was tipped off to a gruesome pattern of unsolved murders along American roadways. Today at least 850 homicides have been linked to a solitary breed of predators: long-haul truck drivers. They have been given names like the “Truck Stop Killer,” who rigged a traveling torture chamber in the rear of his truck and is suspected to have killed fifty women, and “The Interstate Strangler,...

On August 23, 1987, the body of Selonia Reed, 26, was found partially clothed in the passenger seat of her car in an empty parking lot in Hammond, Louisiana. She had sustained incredible blunt force trauma to her head and face, her upper body suffering more than a dozen stab wounds from an-ice pick type weapon. Killed elsewhere, her body drained of blood, she had been displayed, sexually violated...

In 1992, a store clerk was found shot to death in broad daylight at the Boot Village in St. Charles, Missouri. Nothing was stolen and there was no sexual assault. This bizarre and seemingly isolated murder was quickly connected with others in Indianapolis, Wichita, Terre Haute, and Raytown. The media dubbed the suspect “The I-70 Serial Killer.” He has never been captured, and the story quickly fel...

Connected by Fate  unfolds against the haunting backdrop of the Ozark National Forest, where the unresolved murder of Melissa Witt has cast a long shadow over the dense woodlands for almost three decades. The mystery, woven into the fabric of the remote mountaintop, has become a part of the lore of the land, with the true identity of the murderer eluding capture, concealed by the forest's imposing...

John F. Kennedy's life is promoted by sentimental myth-makers as pure legend, but a sinister shadow lies across his life. JFK's death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much of what went before. It is almost always seen through the prism of that single, terrible day in Dallas, obscuring the dark corners of his life and government. For JFK, power...

Jeff German, a veteran Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter, was no stranger to controversy or the danger of his work. For more than four decades, he wrote stories relentlessly confronting the mob, corrupt politicians, and greedy bureaucrats. As a result, he was often threatened—enough that he and his friend and fellow investigative reporter, Arthur Kane, sometimes joked about reporting...

Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr. was only fourteen when he first became entangled with serial rapist and murderer Dean Corll in 1971. Fellow Houston, Texas, teenager David Brooks had already been ensnared by the charming older man, bribed with cash to help lure boys to Corll’s home. When Henley unwittingly entered the trap, Corll evidently sensed he’d be of more use as a second accomplice than another vict...

At the beginning of 2020, Dr. Peter McCullough was a highly regarded practicing physician, program director, teacher, and clinical investigator at a major academic medical center in Dallas, Texas. When COVID-19 arrived in March, he felt a duty to find a treatment for the disease. He wasn't alone. Other doctors all over the world were also searching for a cure. They followed the longstanding princi...

Moments before boarding a passenger flight on 11 May 2019 as the first officer, pilot Christian "Kit" Martin, a former army ranger, was arrested by a swarm of heavily armed officers for the murders of three of his neighbors. The arrest captured global attention as Martin's mugshot, clad in a pilot's uniform, spread across the internet, sparking a media firestorm with headlines such as "Monster in...

John Wayne Gacy raped, tortured, and murdered 33 boys and young men, burying most of them in the crawlspace under his Chicago home. Karen Cont i was in high school at the time watching the bodies being removed on the television news. Fourteen years pass. Through a twist of fate, Conti, now a young and inexperienced attorney, is called upon to handle Gacy’s final death row appeals. The serial kille...

Sandra Bridewell  was a beguiling Dallas socialite in the seventies and early eighties. Her first husband was a prominent dentist who was found shot to death in their home in 1975. The medical examiner ruled his death a suicide. Her second husband, Robert Bridewell, developed the Mansion on Turtle Creek—the first property of Rosewood Hotels and Resorts. Shortly after Mr. Bridewell died of lymphoma...

From historical accounts to modern cases, explore the captivating psychology behind these killer women, unraveling their motives and unveiling the dark complexities of human behavior. The fair sex. We’ve often heard this clichéd expression being used to refer to women. Although it has become increasingly outdated, the mindset still exists that women are the gentle and nurturing sex. When it comes...

At daybreak on January 6, 1986, a couple on a camping trip in the Mojave Desert set out for a stroll and never returned. The local sheriff’s office eventually discovered that Barry and Louise Berman had been murdered. As years passed and the double homicide remained unsolved, the Berman case spawned speculation and conjecture. Despite extensive investigation by local and federal authorities, to da...

In the late 1800's in Rochester, New York, Monroe County—there were 5 sensational murders. The first story is about the home invasion murder of a young wife and mother. Her body was found in the cellar, a flour sack tied tightly around her neck, and her skirt hiked up. At first, of course, the husband is arrested amid rumors he and his wife are swingers. The husband's supporters protest he couldn'...